Find out how to stop your iPhone, iPad, or Mac from automatically showing subtitles when you’re watching a video in Photos, Safari, and other apps.

iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate include an automatic subtitles feature that shows transcribed subtitles for videos even outside traditional media apps, as long as the app or site uses Apple’s video player. For instance, play a video in the Photos app, or on most websites in Safari, and subtitles will start showing.

If you don’t need subtitles for such videos and find them rather distracting for your viewing experience, then turning them off is easy.

1. When the video is playing on iPhone, iPad, or Mac, tap the captions icon as shown in the screenshot.
2. Tap Off to stop subtitles for this video and all future playbacks in this app (see the next heading to turn it off for all apps).
3. In case you want to keep the subtitles but change the language and style, you can adjust those as well.

Here’s how it looks on Mac:

iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 27 usually show subtitles when needed, like when you’re watching a video in another language, the audio is muted, or you skip back in playback. If you don’t want subtitles to appear even in these situations, then follow these steps instead:

1) Open the Settings app on iOS or iPadOS 27 or System Settings on macOS 27 Golden Gate.

2) Select Accessibility.

3) Select Subtitles & Captioning.

4) Turn off the first three options under the Automatic Subtitles section to disable subtitles permanently:

• When Languages Don’t Match: Automatically translated subtitles won’t show even if the video you’re watching is in another language.
• Show When Muted: Subtitles won’t show automatically even if the audio of the video is muted.
• Show on Skip Back: Subtitles won’t appear if you rewind the playback.
• Apply across apps: Turning this on ensures that disabling or enabling subtitles in one app (say Photos) also disables or enables them in all other apps. If the ‘Apply across apps’ toggle is off, then the subtitles management is controllable for each app separately.

Here’s how it’s on Mac:

If you change your mind and think having subtitles can help, just turn it on when watching a video (it takes just a couple of taps). Or, head to subtitles and captioning settings and flip on the automatic settings.

Also, check out: How to see subtitles for any audio or video on iPhone or Mac